Front Burner - Elon Musk vs OpenAI

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

We are entering week two of a dramatic trial that pits two of the biggest names in tech against each other: Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Musk is suing OpenAI, a company that he co-founded, claiming they betrayed their original mission in order to chase profits. According to him, the fate of the world is at stake. But OpenAI says it’s all sour grapes, and that he's just upset that they did so well after he stepped down. New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac has been covering the trial in Oakland, California. He joins us to break down the stakes of the trial, as well as what it’s taught us about the AI race. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Let's see if Toronto advisors know their group insurance providers. Oh, excuse me. Who has extensive expertise in both traditional group benefits and special risk solutions? Beneva. That's right. Who offers adaptable plans that cater to businesses big or small? Beneva. Correct.

Who gives you access to the latest health trends and... I know it. Beniva. Looks like people are starting to know Beneva pretty well. I knew that too. You're stronger with the right partner, Beneva. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody. I'm Jamie Poisson. We are entering week two of a dramatic trial that pits two of the biggest personalities in tech

and two of the most powerful people in the world, Elon Musk and Sam Altman against each other. Elon Musk is suing Open AI, a company that he co-founded, claiming they betrayed their original mission in order to chase profits. According to Musk, the fate of the world is at stake. It's about whether AI can be kept in check. or whether it will run rampant, potentially destroying humanity. But Open AI says it's all tower grapes, that he's upset that the company did so well after he left. After all, he now runs a direct competitor.

One way or the other, this trial could have major consequences for the AI industry. New York Times tech correspondent Mike Isaac has been covering the trial in Oakland, California. And he joins me today. Mike, hey, it's great to talk to you. Hey, thanks for having me. So shall we start with the Elon Musk, Sam Altman, enemy origin story? Like, how did their relationship start? It's a great story because it goes back, you know, more than a decade.

I think you have to remember back in, you know, the early to mid 2010s, Elon Musk was at kind of the height of his fame in a positive sense, you know? There wasn't really any negative stuff that you obviously. are seeing these days around his politics or his views on how the internet should be run or how companies should be run. So everyone was like, oh, yeah, this rocket ship building guy, successor to Steve Jobs, that was like the same breath, right? Sam Altman was like definitely a lesser figure.

He was running what's called Y Combinator. It's like a high profile startup incubator out here. And they had both shared this view that Artifference. artificial intelligence, which back then, again, was like not exactly a mainstream sort of concern or interest even to a lot of people, eventually would be a real worry for the fate of humanity. The thing that these two would always talk about, the reference point was always the Terminator situation, right? And if you've seen Terminator, you know, like, artificial intelligence becomes self-aware and wipes out humanity with nukes at some point. It's very melchamatic. Yeah, killer robots.

Yeah, totally. So the genesis of Open AI was we should build this company, us like a bunch of technologists, that is not controlled by any one person, is not a for-profit business, and develop AI responsibly so that it doesn't take over and kill us all, basically. And that was like they were friends, basically, back then. And fair for me to say that Elon invested tens of millions. of dollars in Open AIA at the time. 100%. It was, I want to say, upwards of a nearly 40 million over the course of a few years,

of his own money. And again, he was very rich as he continues to be. Yeah. So when does this relationship with Open AI and Sam Altman start to fray? When does it start to break apart? Yeah. So for a few years, you know, things were going pretty well. They were, you know, we're in court in seeing these emails of how effusively they praise each other. Musk was giving literally these like early edition Tesla model cars to all of them as like rewards for working on the project. It was a total brofest. And then at some point, things begin to sour. Around 2017, thereabouts, Musk stops being kind of the person in control, something he's not used to.

He's running all of his other different companies. He's like, The Man, everyone lets him do whatever. Sam Altman and other folks at the company are like talking to Microsoft, realizing we might not have the capital to do this sort of project because, as we now know, it costs a lot of money to build AI and to train these computers. And so basically, the emails start getting snippier and the idea that this might not be a completely charitable endeavor at some point. in Elon Musk's mind is something he can't accept, basically. I mean, this would be like, let's say you funded an organization to save the Amazon rainforest. And instead they became a lumber company and chopped down the forest and sold it for money. And you'd be therefore like, well, wait a second, that's the exact opposite of what I gave the money for.

Yeah. Is that legal? I know that there is some debate over this, right? Because Open AI is certainly arguing that Elon was floating. making this for profit. Sure. Just talk to me a little bit about that. And maybe also, like, what would be the problem in Elon's mind for the for-profit wing of Open Air?

So, yeah, exactly. There are, there's things coming out in the discovery process of this trial that show, hey, there was a discussion among some of Elon's folks that he would have an equity stake in this company, you know? Or there was different, like, scenarios in which what would this look like if it was a for-profit company? But I think here's the thing where I think Elon has a point, which is, you know, at the point in which something becomes a for-profit business where the interest is to make money and returns for your shareholders, that just kind of skews incentives on what the development of the technology will look like, I think. So if your idea is we need to build AI in the best interest of humanity, that may be at odds. with the best interests of shareholders and a for-profit business. And I think that's a fair point, you know, like that's kind of the point that we wrestle with around a bunch of different societal issues. And so on the one hand, opening I's point is he's kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's building his own for-profit businesses, even as he professes to, like, love humanity.

But on the other hand, you know, opening I was slowly shifting to a what is now a for-profit business model that they essentially had to. to architect after the fact in a very convoluted process to make money from this company. Yeah, and just tell me more about that because, as I understand it, Musk leaves, although he promises to donate a billion dollars to Open AI over the course of a few years, and then he doesn't continue to fund them. And then how did that affect the course of the company? What do they ultimately end up doing instead? The other thing that's really important is like Elon is like basically the source of the money at this point.

Like they want to do it as a nonprofit, but you this thing, this entity takes a lot of money to keep going. So he was kind of like the entire lifeline for a long time. And him leaving could have been existential for them if they had not attracted interest from Microsoft to sort of like provide them what's called compute, computing power to train these models. But I think, like, yeah, at one point there's an email in which Musk says, guys, I've had enough. We've been bickering about this. He basically, like, throws his hands up, washes his hands after that and says, I'm done with you guys. And then he's like, all right, good luck, Godspeed. And, you know, this was also back in the day where, again, like the AI race was not as competitive it is today.

But Elon still had this nascent worry about this lab called Deep Mind. which was purchased by Google, and that's probably one of the most forefront development labs of this technology in the world. And Elon's sort of constant worry, according to him, was that Larry Page, who did not care about humanity, or at least not as much as Elon, would beat them all to the punch. So Open AI could have been in Elon's mind this way to save humanity and to do it himself. And Elon likes doing things himself, for sure. And then that just kind of fell apart pretty acrimoniously. And now he and Sam Altman from there on out just there was not a lot of love lost after that relationship ended, is what I would say. This is a little bit of a sidebar.

But why does Elon think that Larry Page at Google doesn't care about building AI for humanity? Yeah, this is actually a really good story. My colleague, Cade Mezzar, a book. And there was this really great scene and we adapted it into an article. But basically, Elon and Larry Page, who was one of the co-founders of Google, are having this discussion in like a hotel lobby somewhere, some swank area up in Northern California. And basically discussing how dangerous AI could be for humanity. He just, he was really not concerned about the danger of AI and was quite cavalier about it. And Larry Page sort of says, sure, maybe humans get wiped out, but AI will sort of kind of

continue being self-aware and continue to live on. And like, that's fine because that's just where progress may lead us. And Musk's real deep philosophical concern in that conversation is like, well, humans should be alive and we should be the ones in control. And Larry Page accuses Elon Musk of being a speciesist. A speciesist. And then the final straw was Larry calling me a speciest for being pro-human consciousness instead of machine consciousness. And I'm like, well, yes, I guess I am.

I am a specious. So that's like the original sin of Musk and then they're sort of fracturing. And now Elon Musk and Larry Page just don't talk and pretty much loathe each other. These guys are all weird guys. They're weird guys. That's right. With a lot of power. That's right. And just for clarity sake, am I correct to say, so there's this falling out with Elon and Sam

Altman and Open AI. And he stops funding them. And then Sam Holman and OpenAI basically like walk down the proverbial street to Microsoft. Yeah. They get funded by Microsoft and then they turn private. Yeah. So the Microsoft deal creates this real close relationship

between Open AI and Microsoft that still continues to this day, although they've been sort of distancing each other over time. But yes, like they become enmeshed. Microsoft puts in a ton of resources, basically props this company up. And the unraveling or at least decoupling of the nonprofit entity into a for-profit comes kind of later. But it comes importantly after the chat GPT moment, this idea where in late 2020, they debut chat GPT.

They open AI, Altman certainly didn't think it would be a big deal at all because it came out with little fanfare and frankly a terrible name. And they even recognize that now. And now it becomes like this huge thing. And all of a sudden, everyone's eyes are like, whoa, this could be a business. And that's when the real work of decoupling it from the nonprofit sort of like foundation and charity arm happens. Okay. And it's also around this time or a little bit after this time that Elon launches the lawsuit. That's right. And this is the crux. of what I would say is Open AIs position, which is Musk realizes he's missed the boat. AI is taking off.

ChatGPT is taking off. Open AI is actually valuable in a number of ways. Or you can see it in Musk's point of view as this is getting traction. Now I have to worry about this thing that I wash my hands of and didn't seem to care about because even if they aren't doing what I think is best for humanity, it's not going to work. Now it is working. So Musk launches this lawsuit saying, He was defrauded and, like, provided money under false pretenses.

At the same time, he is slowly forming the foundation of creating XAI after buying Twitter and then bolting this AI arm onto that, basically. So what is Musk asking for in this lawsuit? What is it that he actually, that he wants? Open AI's version of this is Musk is trying to slow us down. He's building a competing for-profit, by the way, business in X-AI, which also, very convoluted turn of events, got merged into SpaceX, which is about to have a trillion-dollar IPO. It's going to be this huge for-profit entity about to go public in the United States. But on the strictest of terms, in this lawsuit, he's asking for more than $100 billion in damages as a result of being what he says is defrauded. and to have Sam Altman removed from leadership.

He also made the stipulation that he wants that money, not for himself, but to be donated back to the nonprofit sort of like charity arm. So he's trying to seem, hey, this is altruistic. This is an endeavor that I'm trying to do for humanity. I'm not trying to enrich myself. But essentially, it could, or at least has the potential to kneecap Open AI at one of the most crucial moments in their existence as they're trying to. become a public company by the end of the year and fending off competition from Anthropic, Google, XAI, and any number of other labs that have really stepped up their own AI development right now. Do you get the sense that Open AI and Sam Altman are taking this pretty seriously?

Absolutely. So I've been in court this past week. Sam has been there almost every day, if not every day. And those benches are very hard. So it's an effort and an effort. But no, they have teams of lawyers. They're holding court outside of the courthouse every day to sort of give their perspective. They're trying to sort of drum up support both in the media, but then from like a grassroots effort and like from the general public. There have been a lot of claims that a charity was stolen and we believe and now know that the evidence is going to show that the Open AI Foundation has been in command of.

of open AI from the beginning. It remains in control of the organization. It is one of the best capitalized and most ambitious not-for-profits in the world, and it's going to do great things. This is the real deal for them. It has the potential to harm now. I wouldn't necessarily go as far to say it could kill the company, but I do think it could materially harm their future.

And just quickly, Microsoft is roped into this as well, too, right? He's doing Microsoft as well. That's right. Microsoft is also a defendant in the case by nature of, you know, they're just pure attachment to Open AI. They're also named. Although they're trying to stay out of it as much as possible. They have a lawyer there, but they ask only a few questions of each witness basically the whole time. Let's see if Toronto advisors know their group insurance providers. Oh, excuse me. Who has extensive expertise in both traditional group benefits and special risk? solutions? Beneva. That's right. Who offers adaptable plans that cater to businesses

big or small? Beniva. Correct. Who gives you access to the latest health trends and... I know it. Beneva. Looks like people are starting to know Beneva pretty well. I knew that too.

You're stronger with the right partner, Beneva. On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture.

We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Immanuel Jochi and Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives, wherever you get your podcasts. So there are some pretty big personalities in this courtroom to say the least. And I know we've been hearing from Elon Musk and then we're going to hear from Sam Altman as well. And I'm sure this is quite personal for him because Elon is asking for him to be removed. Just paint me a picture right now of what it's been like in the courtroom, the vibe, some of the moments that have really stood out to you. Yeah. So first, I think I should point out, this courthouse in Oakland, it's a federal courthouse. It's very different than the San Francisco one. It's somewhat smaller. There's one way in that's pretty compact compared to some of the,

the multiple ways into the San Francisco courthouse that a lot of these tech trials usually occur at. So it's a lot more intimate, frankly. Like, the gathering space outside of the courtroom is fairly small. The big wigs that are arriving only have like a small sort of room down a hallway that they can like stand in when there's court recess and like get a snack or drink or use a restroom or whatever. So like by that nature, like we're just all in it together basically. And it's really a different vibe because these are people with more money than anyone on, literally than anyone on Earth and can kind of make the world the way they want to at all times, you know, they don't have to deal with things they don't like to necessarily, except in a federal courthouse where there are rules. And you have to go through a metal detector. Elon Musk had to take his belt off and go through twice because he forgot to the first time, you know?

like it's like coming back down to earth with the rest of us. Yeah, yeah. They can't walk out of an interview. Like they're under oath on the stand, right? Exactly. That's exactly right. That was the other thing, like, to your point, like, he can't walk off the stand. And Elon was getting super annoyed with the cross-examination from Open AIs lawyers in a way where it was pretty clear to me that he just doesn't get spoken to like that a lot in his daily life.

And he doesn't have people like. prodding him and challenging him and raising their voice at him, like, on certain things, you know, and that's luxury of being a, you know, the world's richest man, but also like, that's just, that's what happens when you get, when you have to testify under oath. Like he was accusing the lawyer of being misleading and asking confusing questions to try to trick him, essentially, right? There was another point where the judge basically they had to tell him to stop talking about the Terminator.

What was that all about? Yeah. So, Musk's counsel is really hammering this. point about, yeah, the Terminator end of the world. They're trying to call a witness who is all about AI safety, but really harps on, like, how this could kill us all. And in a sort of like post-trial discussion, we're in the room when the lawyers talk to the judge at the beginning and the end of the day, but the jury is not there.

And she's just the judge, Judge Gonzalez, basically was like, look, this is not a case on whether or not AI is going to destroy the world. I feel like that's going to be a sideshow distraction for the jury who's going to fixate on Terminator, Terminator, Terminator, right? And part of Musk's legal strategy, I would say, is hammering that into the World Point home because he wants to appear to be, you know, a selfless hero in this case. And this is the only reason why he's bringing this case reluctantly is because he feels existential risk here. Yeah, yeah. If Musk does get a win here, we talked about what it could mean that it could be a real hit for Open AI at a pretty crucial time. I just wonder if you could extrapolate that a little bit more for me.

Like what would it mean for the industry? Yeah. I mean, one of the other things I think we have to step back and really look at right now is that this has been. So 2022 through, let's say, 2025, Open AI was considered as a leader, like a leader. market leader in this. They have, as of this moment, almost a billion users, regular users of chat GPT, which is a lot of people. They were the fastest growing consumer app in tech history of all time.

They were adding millions per day, basically, at their height, like a million people per day, and then that went up. And they were able to raise basically unlimited money from every funding source on earth. So, like, the idea was just like, how are you going to catch up to this juggernaut? And then a lot of companies started catching up, basically. You know, we have Anthropic, which is less well known by consumers, but has built really advanced technology to allow robots to code and code, if not as well, then even better than human engineers in some cases. We have Google, which has a great advantage in their consumer. products are used all over the world. We all use, or many of us use Gmail. We use Google Office

products, Google Cloud, Google Search. And all they got to do is shove their AI into all of those products and instantly have a large consumer base. And then XAI is actually the one. It's competing, but I would say it's the furthest behind as far as these big ones go. And so long story short, having a huge financial penalty and or removing the CEO of this company from a company that is trying to go public by the end of the year is losing billions of dollars every year, $9 billion a year in losses just to build the stuff they're building. It's just bad. It's just bad timing. And it could really give the other companies, like, more room to execute and build their businesses. And right now, Anthropic in particular, is ramping up its business from it was like $9 billion in revenue last year to like $32 billion in a matter of a few months, which is unheard of. And what do you think it happens if Musk loses here? I mean, also for Sam Altman, who has faced some challenges of his own, like he's fought internal battles.

He's faced a lot of accusations of being dishonest. There was a pretty unflattering profile of him in the new, Yorker recently and what position could have victory put him in? Well, this is the sort of other annoying thing for OpenAI is that Musk doesn't really have anything to lose here. All he has to do is levy this lawsuit, tie him up in court. And if he loses, he's back where they started, right? They're still just competing with XAI. There's not going to be any penalty. That's what it's like to be a plaintiff and just sort of do this. It's similar to cases like meta facing class action lawsuits around child safety and stuff, you know, like

if they win, they're just meta still, you know, like it's a victory in that they're not, you know, harmed financially or from a strategy perspective. But if they lose, it could fundamentally change what their business looks like. And I think that's exactly the same for Musk and open AI here. Like if not, then Musk continues doing his thing, basically. Right. He loses some money, which he has quite a lot of. That's exactly right.

Like these lawyers fees are a line item that he will never read in his bank account. Just as a final thought here, I would just be curious to ask someone like you who watches these companies so closely. So far, what is your biggest takeaway been from this trial that we haven't necessarily talked about in this conversation? The thing that's been surprising to me. Okay, here's what I'd say. I've been covering technology since 2010. 10, so what, like 15, 16 years. And I think after being a tech reporter for this long, you start to get a little cynical and wonder if what they're saying they actually believe most of the time.

A little. Yeah. And like a lot of the time, I would argue they probably don't, or at least some portion of the time, a lot of it is like strategic, you know. And a lot of this is like, okay, I'm going to say this because my competitor is doing this and we have to get an advantage. Jim, like, that's capitalism. That's the rules of engagement in the business world. And, you know, I may not agree with it or whatever, but I understand it, if that makes sense. I think the way that they were talking through the process of reading decade-old emails and guys who had no reason to preen or, you know, sort of like act for anyone watching because it was like four people on an email, constantly saying, this is going to kill us all.

We need to be worried about this. This is how they really talk and believe this particular thing. And I don't think I ever really had that sink in because I always sort of believed it was like a business tactic to gain more control. I think it's a bit of both, honestly. I do think they believe it. And I also think at this stage of the game when it's so competitive, they're willing to do kind of whatever it takes to get that next edge. I mean, how does that make someone like you feel about this? path that we're on with AI right now, does it feel you with a greater level of anxiety than you

had before you saw these emails? Yeah, it's a great question because I would also say getting back to my cynicism, like I was very skeptical on all of the, oh, we're going to die or this stuff is so super powerful. I think for a few years, I just didn't believe it. And I mostly based on the extremely large errors and embarrassing errors that AI makes and continues to make. I think AI has gotten very good at some things. I think looking at how well it's learned to code and to run computer systems and particularly this model called Mythos on how it can exploit and harm computer systems, which are deeply complicated, very old in some cases and easy to exploit in others, that's something that worries me to a great degree. Like the infrastructure of the Internet and of what how much of. of our global economy runs is like deeply complicated and decades old.

And if you can train a computer to dig through that much faster than a human, like, that is worrisome. So even if it's not SkyNet, I think we get too focused on SkyNet and not focused enough on the practical potential ways that this stuff can, you know, dramatically change how we function. Mike, that's great place for us to end. Thank you so much for this. This was awesome and really fun to talk to you. Awesome. Thank you for having me. I'll tell you how court goes over the next few weeks. Yeah, I can't wait, actually. I'll be watching. And you've such a fun Twitter feed for anybody here. Well, X feed, whatever. For anybody who wants to follow you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. c.ca slash podcasts.